ARCTIC THAW, ALPINE MELTDOWN

HO could have expected that news of the end of the world would be broadcast not from the UN General Assembly or a parliament, but from a talk-shop run by an NGO set up by an engineer?

- PRATIK KANJILAL

That’s what Davos is, actually.And who could have expected that 1970s’ vintage Vaclav Havel would be invoked to make sense of the news? Or that the news peg would be Arctic Greenland, whose vicinity has been in the news only because global warming is shrinking the permanent ice pack, with consequences for global weather? Only the Russians are pleased because their northern ports may become all-weather, and anyway, they’re tired of being cold and dreaming of holidays in Goa and Pattaya.

The Arctic is also important for aviation, and found its place in culture in Arlo Guthrie’s 1969 hit ‘Coming into Los Angeles’, which described his flight amid a planeload of chickens: “Coming in from London from over the pole/ Flying in a big airliner.” During the Cold War, ballistic missile flight paths between the US and the USSR also passed over those regions, hence the strategic importance of US assets in Greenland. But the Cold War is long over and though Moscow still owns more nukes, Russia is not the same as the USSR. In contrast, Xi’s China is greater than Mao and Deng’s China. The geopolitical landscape has changed.